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 As I promised a few days before, besides the launch of OXID eShop 4 there will be another little surprise… OXID eShop now is also available Open Source!

Without restrictions, without compromise. We have chosen the dual licensing model. That means, the code base of OXID eShop Community Edition is exactly the same as that of OXID eShop Professional Edition. From today every customer, developer or partner has the freedom of choice to realize their eCommerce projects either with the Community Edition (GPL v3) that is available as free download or the Professional Edition (commercial license) bundled with an attractive support subscription with guarantied response times.

For us here at OXID as you can imagine it’s a big and exciting step, that we intensively planned over the last months. You may ask yourself why we did this step and why we did it now?

First of all we strongly believe that the commercial Open Source approach meantime is the better way to build and to sell enterprise software. We want to give every merchant the chance to use our technology , to earn money and to establish oneself successfully in the eCommerce market.

Of course, we also want and need to earn money. But in our opinion, it makes much more sense to grow our business by broadening our focus in product development and quality by bringing in our community. Instead of investing in aggressive marketing, we will invest in community building to expand our business.

If you really need us, when your business grows you can count on us. Be it professional support offerings, our eCommerce intelligence platform OXID eFire or our proprietary licensed products eShop Professional and Enterprise Edition. And finally we did this step, because due to our improved development process and our completely refactored product in generation 4 we now are able to provide you with updates and patches in that quality and speed that you'd expect.

We want to invite you to build an “architecture of participation” together with us: Realizing eCommerce projects based on OXID eShop, developing modules and themes, translating interfaces or improving documentation together with us. We will give our best to establish a sustainable, trustful partnership with you.

On our website you already find a community forum, lots of documentation and tutorials that makes your life easier. A place where developers and partners can exchange and distribute modules and themes as well as a translation-tool for the interface will follow soon. But that’s just the beginning. We look forward to hear from you and to discuss with you how we can move forward and make a difference in the eCommerce world together.

Roland Fesenmayr
CEO OXID eSales AG